This past weekend Chad, Erik, David and I took on the marathon relay at the the Northface Endurance Challenge in Kettle Morraine, WI. This wasn't a road relay...it was a trail relay. Considering I've never really done any "trail" running this was quite the shocker to my system! Here's how the day went down...
Leg 1 - David took off, headed out into the lead, took a few wrong turns because it was tough to see where you were supposed to go and ended up with one of the fastest times of the day but we were the 3rd place relay team when he returned...he would have easily been winning if he hadn't gone off course.
Leg 2 - Chad's turn to do some damage. We were about 2 minutes down from the lead, and 40 seconds out of second. When Chad was done he ran us into 2nd place and put some significant time into the now third place team.
Leg 3 - Bird was off, and had about a 3 minute deficit to a dude who looked like a true trail runner. This guy had already run the first leg and was familiar with the course, with Bird being color blind we just hoped he would stay on course! He did an awesome job and kept the first place team within striking distance.
Leg 4 - When I took over the timing chip we were still in 2nd place. I knew exactly how much time I had to make up, and like the guy Bird was chasing the person in front of me had already run the course once (it was a husband and wife team...their splits were very impressive). I took off like a bat out of hell because I knew I had to try to catch this team. Not knowing how hard the trails were to run I decided to try to make up some serious time on the short .75 mile road section leading to the trail. As I looked down at my Garmin I was reading in the 5:05-5:09 range. Things felt fine so I stuck with it and decided not to look down any more. I hit the trail and it was immediately up, so I focused on taking short steps, keeping my HR down and trying to remember that I would run down this hill later so I could make up time then. At about mile 2.5 I passed the first place team. Now I would be the one with the target on my back, since there was so much twisting and turning, climbing and descending in the trail I wanted to get out of sight quickly. So I pushed the next 10 minutes pretty hard, took a look back and 2nd place was no where in sight. Now it was time to try to break a time I had in my head. As it turns out I didn't break the time...I was close...but that's alright.
All in all it was a great day, cool venue, and a fun race. My quads are still trashed from running hard down hill! It probably doesn't help that yesterday Chad and I hit up a 5000 yard swim to start the day, which I followed up with a 101 mile trainer ride and a 3 mile run on the treadmill. Oh yea and 20 minutes in the 140 degree sauna. The sauna was the hardest part of yesterday!
I'm still pretty sore right now, my Zoot Compression Tights helped last night, and my Zoot Ultra Kalani 2.0's helped me to one of the fastest splits at the race Saturday, I think there was one faster split than me...that guy was haulin!!
Kona is getting close, it's almost time to back off slightly...until then I need to keep getting the work done, sore or not!
Leg 1 - David took off, headed out into the lead, took a few wrong turns because it was tough to see where you were supposed to go and ended up with one of the fastest times of the day but we were the 3rd place relay team when he returned...he would have easily been winning if he hadn't gone off course.
Leg 2 - Chad's turn to do some damage. We were about 2 minutes down from the lead, and 40 seconds out of second. When Chad was done he ran us into 2nd place and put some significant time into the now third place team.
Leg 3 - Bird was off, and had about a 3 minute deficit to a dude who looked like a true trail runner. This guy had already run the first leg and was familiar with the course, with Bird being color blind we just hoped he would stay on course! He did an awesome job and kept the first place team within striking distance.
Leg 4 - When I took over the timing chip we were still in 2nd place. I knew exactly how much time I had to make up, and like the guy Bird was chasing the person in front of me had already run the course once (it was a husband and wife team...their splits were very impressive). I took off like a bat out of hell because I knew I had to try to catch this team. Not knowing how hard the trails were to run I decided to try to make up some serious time on the short .75 mile road section leading to the trail. As I looked down at my Garmin I was reading in the 5:05-5:09 range. Things felt fine so I stuck with it and decided not to look down any more. I hit the trail and it was immediately up, so I focused on taking short steps, keeping my HR down and trying to remember that I would run down this hill later so I could make up time then. At about mile 2.5 I passed the first place team. Now I would be the one with the target on my back, since there was so much twisting and turning, climbing and descending in the trail I wanted to get out of sight quickly. So I pushed the next 10 minutes pretty hard, took a look back and 2nd place was no where in sight. Now it was time to try to break a time I had in my head. As it turns out I didn't break the time...I was close...but that's alright.
All in all it was a great day, cool venue, and a fun race. My quads are still trashed from running hard down hill! It probably doesn't help that yesterday Chad and I hit up a 5000 yard swim to start the day, which I followed up with a 101 mile trainer ride and a 3 mile run on the treadmill. Oh yea and 20 minutes in the 140 degree sauna. The sauna was the hardest part of yesterday!
I'm still pretty sore right now, my Zoot Compression Tights helped last night, and my Zoot Ultra Kalani 2.0's helped me to one of the fastest splits at the race Saturday, I think there was one faster split than me...that guy was haulin!!
Kona is getting close, it's almost time to back off slightly...until then I need to keep getting the work done, sore or not!
Finishing up the relay
This Jeep was at the race, it looks sweet...I want one!
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